What is CRM?

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What is CRM?

What exactly is CRM? Customer Relationship Management is a company-based busi-

ness strategy that is meant to achieve better cost effectiveness and improve profitabil-
ity by understanding specific customer requirements. This is of most use to customer
facing employees who can make speedy but informed decisions ranging from market-
ing strategy to positioning tactics.

The underlying philosophy of CRM essentially boils down to one single question – How does
this serve the customer better? This is the same question that must permeate the entire or-
ganization right from the CEO to the customer service representative.

Support

However for CRM to work more effectively, it is es-

CRM
sential for three main supporting structures to be in
place. It works like a tripod does. If one of the legs
People Technology
were shorter than the other, the effectiveness of the
structure would be compromised. Technology is used
to improve and support the processes which are
easy-to-use and relevant to the task at hand for the
involved personnel. The first step would be to con- Process
vince the people involved of its necessity. This
should ideally be followed by an analysis of the business processes to select those relevant
aspects of customer information that require automation through technology.

Advantages

CRM involves some aspects of technology, but is lot more

Customer Streamlined than that. It uses technology as a means to process informa-
Service Sales tion related to people. This in turn assists the organization in
Efficiency Processes
terms of marketing, responsiveness and market analysis. In
simple business terms, this translates into increasing effi-
ciency in terms of customer service. Also affected (in a posi-
Cost
Customer Efficiency tive sense of course) are the processes are a whole due to
Share & Profits streamlining and cutting down of unnecessary overheads.
Customer share also increases due to this streamlining. Cus-
tomer share increasing obviously implies more profits and
better cost effectiveness accruing from the streamlining.
In the end, the success of the CRM solution depends a lot on the extent to which the organi-
zation looks at CRM more as a business strategy rather than just a technology aid. With the
tripod in place, the circle will follow. And then there can be only happiness all around.

What is CRM?
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